The present invention relates to a substrate exposure apparatus and an illumination apparatus.
The previous procedure to pattern a printed circuit board, the TFT substrate or color filter substrate of a liquid crystal display or the substrate of a plasma display by exposure to light was to fabricate a mask, which constitutes the master of the pattern, and to expose the substrate to light with mask exposure apparatus using this master mask. However, fabricating a mask for each substrate posed problems, such as taking a long time to obtain the intended product. As a solution to these problems, what is known as the Direct Exposure Machine (DE) which can directly draw a desired pattern (by exposure to light) by use of a two-dimensional optical space modulator capable of two-dimensional modulation of light, such as a liquid crystal display or a digital mirror device (DMD), is now in proliferation (see Patent Document 1). The working process of the exposure apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 1 begins by shaping light emitted from plural light sources into beams which are circular in sectional shape, and then bringing them into incidence on an integrator including plural rod lenses, and exposing a substrate to light for patterning by being moved in one direction while a DMD which is a two-dimensional optical space modulator is irradiated with light emerging from the integrator while modulation is being accomplished with the DMD.
Patent Document 1: JP-A-039871/2004